ACROD and Uniate consecration of altar

[CGW]

Perhaps they stood off to one side, so as not to get their Anglican cooties on the "table".

I sang in the choir at the consecration of an Orthodox church once, so I assume that church is "invalid" too.

If you really believe the reasoning for the "traditionalist" position is this childish, or superficial, then I am very disheartened.

Well, I don't know about superficial. But history is full of people taking childish things deadly seriously.

[Kollyvas]

http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/

Carpatho-Russia And The Struggle For The Russian Orthodox Tradition Outside Russia

Introduction: Carpatho-Russia

Carpatho-Russia is situated in Eastern Europe, being a stretch of territory comprising the south-west facing slopes of the Carpathians. It is located in what is now northern and eastern Slovakia, south-eastern Poland and above all south-western Ukraine, in the region known as Transcarpathia. There are also Carpatho-Russians in Serbia and a few in northern Romania and Hungary. As well as this, there is a very large immigration, dating back to the late nineteenth century, mainly in the north-east of the United States.

Numbering nearly a million, the inhabitants of Carpatho-Russia are variously called ‘Ruthenians’ and 'Rusnaks'. In the eastern highlands of Carpatho-Russia there are 'Hutsuls', in the centre 'Boikos' and in Poland, ‘Lemkos’. Most, however, live in the lowland foothills of the Carpathians. Generally, they call themselves ‘Carpatho-Russian’ or ‘Rusin’ (also spelled 'Rusyn'). Their language is an East Slav language, close to, but distinct from, Russian and Ukrainian. The natural capital is Uzhgorod, since 1945 just inside the Ukrainian border. Other major towns are Mukachevo in the Ukraine and Presov in Slovakia.

Throughout its history, Carpatho-Russia has frequently been invaded, a victim of one great power or another, from Hungary and the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the Nazi Reich and the Soviet Union. For this reason it has various names, such as ‘Hungarian Russia’ (from the Hungarian domination), 'Ruthenia' (among the Latin-minded), ‘Transcarpathian Ukraine’ (in Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine), or ‘Subcarpathian Russia’ (geographically and technically exact). Despite the attractions of the latter term, in this article we will mainly use the term Carpatho-Russia. In our context it seems the most applicable term for this island of Russian Orthodoxy outside Russia.

History and National Awakening

The south-west facing slopes of the Carpathians have been inhabited by the Slavs since at least the sixth century and are regarded as the cradle of Russia. However, in c. 896 the region was settled by the pagan Hungarians. They were tolerant of its Slav inhabitants, the Carpatho-Russians, who in the ninth century had already received Orthodox Christianity from Sts Cyril and Methodius or their disciples – well before the Baptism of Rus in Kiev. However, the Hungarians were later to fall under the influence of the Germans, who were beginning to break away from the Church. Indeed, in the eleventh century, under their own Popes, the Germans began developing a new religion, which came to be known as Roman Catholicism. Unfortunately, they took the Hungarians with them.

Thus, after the 1054 schism, the Hungarians started to oppress the Carpatho-Russians, trying to baptizing them into the Roman Catholic schism. As in Western and Central Europe, the feudal system was introduced to suppress the peasant population. To this day several castles can be seen in Carpatho-Russia which witness to this oppression, which led to a resistance movement led by local heroes. Carpatho-Russia was then much tried by the Muslim/Tartar invasion of 1241, but Orthodoxy survived and even prospered. However, in 1646, Roman Catholicism attacked again, this time with the weapon of Uniatism. Sadly, during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the impoverished and defenceless Carpatho-Russian Orthodox were gradually forced into accepting Uniatism in order to survive. The exception among them was the priest and writer Mikhail Orosvigovsky (Andrella) (1637-1710), who vigorously opposed the lie of Uniatism. The last Carpatho-Russian Bishop, Dositheus, was blinded and effectively died as a martyr in 1734 and the Hungarians did not allow new Orthodox clergy from then on.

Uniatism was later to be opposed by Uniats who themselves realized that the true interests of Carpatho-Russia were in an alliance with Orthodox Russia. In the nineteenth century, Uniat Rusins like the national poet, Alexander Dukhnovich (1803-65), or Ioann Rakovsky (1815-1885), Adolf Dobriansky (1817-1901) and Evgeny Fentsik (1844-1903) worked to revive the national conscience, allying themselves with the Slavophiles in Russia. Following this national awakening, the next step would come with the conversion of Carpatho-Russians to Orthodoxy, so finally shaking off the spiritual and national slavery of Uniatism.

The Story of the Return to Orthodoxy in Carpatho-Russia

One of the first to launch the return to Orthodoxy movement in Carpatho-Russia was Archimandrite Vladimir (Terletsky) (born 1808). At first a Uniat priest, he eventually became Orthodox in Kiev in 1872 after Hungarian persecution at home. In Kiev he wrote of the national awakening in Carpatho-Russia. A second personality was the Uniat priest Ioann Rakovsky (+1885), mentioned above, from the village of Iza near Khust (now in the Ukraine). Although he remained a Uniat until his death-bed, after him others actually joined the Orthodox Church, despite the fact that in the Austro-Hungarian Empire it was possible to join any religion - except Orthodoxy.

Thus, when in 1903 the villagers of Iza announced their intention to become Orthodox, their Golgotha began. Once the villagers had for the first time sung the Creed without the notorious filioque, Iza was flooded with Hungarian police. There were house searches and liturgical books and icons were confiscated. The police stayed in their village for several months, extorting food from the villagers, oppressing them and mocking the womenfolk. Eventually, the police began arrests and put 22 men on trial.

This trial, known as the 'First Maramorosh-Sighet Trial' took place in 1904. The accusation was 'Treason', later changed to 'Incitement against the Hungarian Nationality'. Three peasants, Joachim Vakarov, Vasily Lazar and Vasily Kamen were sentenced to fourteen months imprisonment and had to pay a huge fine with equally huge costs. Land, homes, cattle and domestic gear were auctioned off to pay these fines. The peasants were released from prison as paupers and their families were looked after by relatives with the help of the parish of Iza. However Joachim Vakarov and his friends were not daunted. Soon the Hungarians built a police station in the village, which was only three miles from another police garrison. Joachim Vakarov was seized and tortured to death. The peasants, priestless, buried him themselves, singing the funeral hymn.

Joachim's martyrdom only increased resistance. Several villages, Luchki, Tereblia and others, decided to return to Orthodoxy. The peasants searched for an Orthodox priest so they could be received into the Church, but at that time it was impossible for Russian priests to cross the border. It was only later that the great friend of Carpatho-Russia, the brilliant theologian and energetic restorer of Patristic Orthodoxy in Russia, Archbishop Antony (Khrapovitsky) (1863-1936), later Metropolitan of Kiev and First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, managed to obtain jurisdiction in the Carpathians.

Therefore the peasants approached the Serbian bishop in Budapest. The latter was afraid of the Hungarian authorities and refused to see the delegation. The peasants then went to the Serbian Patriarch in Karlovtsy, since his Church cared for all Orthodox in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although he received them, he too was fearful of Austro-Hungarian terror. The peasants replied that if he refused, then he would have to answer for this at the Last Judgement. The Patriarch decided to send a priest. When the Uniat bishop of the nearby town of Mukachevo heard this, he rushed to Vienna to denounce it, saying that if it were allowed, then his whole diocese would go over to Orthodoxy and he would be unemployed. His denunciation was heard favourably; this act will be on his conscience for all eternity.

Meanwhile, the peasants of Iza began holding their own services, until they were able to cross the border secretly to Romanian Bukovina, where a priest baptized their children. The peasants built a chapel in the village, but this was demolished by the Hungarian police, who forbade them to pray together. Nevertheless, other villages began to follow Iza in the great return to Orthodoxy. It was only in 1910 that Carpatho-Russia at last received a spiritual leader in the person of Hieromonk Alexis (Kabaliuk). It was in that year that he arrived in their village secretly, in a hay cart.

Fr Alexis

This confessor of Orthodoxy was born on 1 September 1877 in the Carpatho-Russian village of Yasinie, to the pious family of a wood-cutter, Ivan Kabaliuk and his very devout wife Hannah. The child, one of eight, was named after the holy Prince Alexander Nevsky. As a child he began parish school at the age of six and showed both piety and intelligence, reading all he could about Orthodoxy. He frequently visited the Orthodox monasteries in neighbouring Bukovina, and also the Uniat monastery of Kish-Baran. As a young man, he completed his military service only to return home and find his father on his death-bed. He then visited the Monastery of Biskad, now in Romania, to ask the clairvoyant Elder Arcadius whether he should marry or become a monk. The answer was monasticism.

Since this sensitive soul could not accept the lie of Uniatism, in 1905 and 1906 Alexander visited the Lavras in Kiev and Pochaiev, where he met both the elderly Metropolitan of Kiev, Flavian, and the dynamic Archbishop Antony (Khrapovitsky), who was to play a vital role in Fr Alexis’ later life. In 1908 he decided to go on pilgrimage to Mt Athos and Jerusalem. He became Orthodox in July 1908 at the Russian monastery of St Panteleimon on Mt Athos and then returned to Russia, with the gift of an icon of the Mother of God of the Akathist, which was to accompany him for the rest of his life. In early 1910 he became a monk at the Yablochino monastery (now in Poland), took the name Alexis and undertook theological studies. On 15 August 1910, again with the support of Archbishop Antony, he was ordained hieromonk, with the name of Alexis. From there he was invited to Iza. He celebrated secretly here, also in Mukachevo and elsewhere.

In his homeland Fr Alexis’ first enemy, and that of Carpatho-Russian spiritual identity, was Uniatism. The Austro-Hungarian policy of divide and rule meant separating the inhabitants of the Russian borderlands (the meaning of the word 'Ukraine') from the Russian motherland. This meant the religious artifice of Uniatism, which would later lead to the invention of a separate nationalist identity through 'ukrainianization'. This weapon was especially used in the west of Little Russia (now the Ukraine), known as Galicia, which had long been under Polish influence. However, the lie was given to this Austro-Hungarian invention by the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox. Their own name for themselves, 'Rusiny', clearly showed that they were not some entirely different nationality and their whole history was in fact part of Russian Orthodoxy. They are not 'Carpatho-Ukrainians', but Carpatho-Russians This explains why the Austro-Hungarians were so frightened of Rusin Orthodoxy and tried to suppress it.

However, nothing could stop Fr Alexis, neither torture, nor persecution. His strong faith, zeal and desire to serve his people were such that he worked as a wood-turner, for he was unwilling to live off poor peasants. He went around all the villages that had returned to Orthodoxy, celebrating the sacraments, teaching and strengthening in the faith. In one day he baptized 200 children and gave communion to over 1,000 faithful. According to a Hungarian newspaper, in the area of Maramorosh around Iza over 14,000 people became Orthodox.

Within two years Fr Alexis had set up 28 Orthodox communities in various villages. He searched for help everywhere, returning again to Athos and also meeting the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Serbia. The persecutions worsened and Fr Alexis was arrested several times. The police surrounded churches, searched homes, confiscating prayer-books, icons, crosses and religious literature. Huge fines were imposed on the peasants, the area was flooded with police and chapels were closed. Those who had become Orthodox were imprisoned. In reply, even more villages became Orthodox.

Fr Alexis was hunted by the Hungarian Catholic authorities like a wild animal. In mid-1912 he was forced to leave first for Yablochino, then in the spring of 1913 for Russia, finally for America, where there was a large Carpatho-Russian colony. There, together with Fr Alexander Khotovitsky, he continued his missionary exploits and hundreds of thousands of Carpatho-Russians returned to the Orthodoxy of their forebears. From here Fr Alexis corresponded unceasingly with his flock and the Austro-Hungarians began arresting anyone with a letter bearing an American stamp. Several hundred were imprisoned, including all of Fr Alexis' relatives.

Other Holy Confessors

The police resorted to torture. Orthodox were hung up on trees so that their feet did not touch the ground. In this way their noses, mouths and ears began to bleed. If the tortured began to lose consciousness, the police threw water over them so that the torment would continue. One woman from the village of Lezhie died as a result of this torture. Many underwent 'the tree of torment', but they did not renounce Orthodoxy. Others fled to the mountains and the forests.

In this way eleven girls, instructed by Fr Alexis' sister, Vasilisa, became nuns secretly. They went off to the mountains, built a house in the forest and lived the monastic life there. The police found out about this and hunted them down. They forced them to strip, made them stand in their undergarments in icy water for two hours and then threw them into prison. Their names were: Maria Vakarova, Pelagia Smolik, Anna Vakarova, Maria Madiar, Pelagia Tust, Pelagia Shcherban, Paraskeva Shcherban, Juliana Azay, Maria Prokun, Maria Dovganich, Anna Kamen. In 1910, the Orthodox, priestless, turned to Russia for help. Candidates for ordination were sent to the monastery in Yablochino. Among them were Vasily Kamen and Vasily Vakarov. They were taken with love into the monastery. Meanwhile, the people of Iza gathered to pray at the home of a villager, Maxim Prokop. In 1913 his niece, Juliana Prokop, suffered for Christ, becoming a holy confessor. No more than a young girl, in 1913 she set up in her village what was in fact a convent.

On 23 July that year another Maramorosh-Sighet trial began. In this the prosecutor charged ‘Alexander’ Kabaliuk, aged 36, and another 94 individuals, including the priests Gregory Gritsak and Nicholas Sabov and other peasants from Iza. Fr Alexis voluntarily returned from his few months in the USA for the trial, in order to suffer together with his flock. With others they were charged with receiving help from Orthodox Russia and Mt Athos to convert Uniats to Orthodoxy. This was seen as treason by the Austro-Hungarians.

At this trial Fr Alexis defended them, saying that they had no political axe to grind, their sole interest was the Orthodox Faith and that if they had to suffer for this holy cause, then so be it. The trial lasted for two months. Finally, on 3 March 1914 Fr Alexis was sentenced to four and a half years' imprisonment and fined. The others received between three years and six months. On hearing the sentence, the Russian Emperor, Nicholas II, awarded Fr Alexis a golden pectoral cross for his confession of the Faith and services were celebrated in the churches of Russia glorifying his feat.

During the trial the police burst into Iza and captured Juliana Prokop and her monastic sisters. Taken to the police station, they were tortured and the police tried to persuade them to renounce Orthodoxy. Then, in the frost, the girls were showered with water and forced into the street. Here they were stripped and beaten mercilessly. Barefoot and bare-breasted, they were paraded around the village in the hope they would renounce the Orthodox Faith. The streets remained empty and the villagers shocked, though helpless. The Uniat priest, who had called in the police, invited Juliana and craftily tried to persuade her to renounce the Faith. She remained firm, even though the tortures continued for another three months. Not a single sister gave up the Faith.

In early 1914 three priests arrived from Russia, Fr Amphilochius (Vasily Kamen), Fr Matthew (Vasily Vakarov) and Fr Seraphim (later killed in the war). They were arrested immediately and sent to the nearby local centre of Khust. The first two were placed under house arrest and Fr Seraphim was sent to the army. When the First War began, Fr Amphilochius and forty peasants were arrested. He was sentenced to four years imprisonment. They also arrested Juliana and her sisters in Christ and they too were sent to Khust. They were freed only when Russian troops entered the town. After the Russian retreat, the sisters remained faithful and would meet together at night to pray. For spiritual guidance they went to Fr Amphilochius, by then in prison in Kosice (now in Slovakia).

In 1917 all the sisters were again placed under house arrest, but this time they had to go to the police station for interrogation three times a day. In 1918 they beat Juliana almost to death. Her body was covered with wounds, her nose broken, her head badly bruised. The beatings were accompanied by words to persuade her to renounce Orthodoxy and the monastic life. But they failed. Disfigured and covered in blood Juliana was taken to the basement and covered in sand. Nobody was allowed to see her. On the fourth day Juliana came to. The police had not expected her to survive. She was taken to her father and a doctor called. However, she refused medical help and was healed miraculously. In 1924 Juliana the Confessor was tonsured with the name of Paraskeva and became Abbess of the Convent at Maramorosh. On her repose she was buried in the Monastery of St Nicholas in Mukachevo.

Confessing the Faith Between the Wars

After the First World War and the collapse of the prison of the peoples, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Carpatho-Russia found itself in the new state of Czechoslovakia. Although the atrocities of the Austro-Hungarians had now stopped, unfortunately, the Saint Germain en Laye agreement of 1919 which had given rise to the new state, was not truly implemented. As a result, Carpatho-Russia did not receive autonomy within Czechoslovakia and attempts to Uniatize and ukrainianize continued. However those who tried this would now have to reckon with a free Fr Alexis.

At the end of the First World War Fr Alexis had been imprisoned and bayoneted for his Faith by the Austrians. In autumn 1919 he was cared for in hospital in Kiev and visited by Metropolitan Antony, his great admirer. The latter called Fr Alexis ‘a hero’ and even more prophetically, ‘a confessor and martyr for the Truth of Christ’. The story of this is related in Volume IV of the Metropolitan's Biography (1). Returning from imprisonment and hospital, Fr Alexis lived in the Monastery of St Nicholas, which he had founded in Iza, next to the church in which Fr Ioann Rakovsky had served. Here in 1921 he became Abbot. By then the villages around Iza, Bystry, Gorinchevo, Uybarovo, Lipcha, Tereblia and Koshelevo had all come over to Orthodoxy. Thanks to the work initiated by Fr Alexis, over a relatively short period of time more than a thousand Rusin parishes would eventually return to Orthodoxy. Fr Alexis was aided in his missionary work by two of Adolph Dobriansky's grandsons, Alexis Gerovsky (1883-1972) and George Gerovsky (1886-1959).

On the Feast of the Transfiguration 1921, Fr Alexis opened the Council of the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church. There were over 400 delegates from all the Orthodox villages of the region. The delegates accepted a constitution and the official name 'The Carpatho-Russian Eastern Orthodox Church'. The Conference decided to remain within the Serbian Church, then under the excellent Bishop Dositheus, as before, especially as so many of the Serbian representatives had studied in Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia was based in Serbia.

The head of the exiled Russian Church in Serbia was Fr Alexis' old patron, Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky), who continued to help the Carpatho-Russians. He sent the famed missionary, Archimandrite Vitaly (Maximenko), to the area around Presov (now in Slovakia). Before the Revolution Fr Vitaly had headed the typography at the Pochaev Laura. Now, to the north of Presov, he founded the Monastery of St Job, brought monks from Valaam and started to publish a newspaper 'Orthodox Carpatho-Russia'. This later became the official journal of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

The Carpatho-Russians also received help from the seminary in Bitol in Serbia, especially from its most distinguished representatives Fr (later St) John (Maximovich) and Fr (later St) Justin (Popovich). The latter served for some time as a missionary around Presov. Altogether over 11,000 White Russians settled in Carpatho-Russia, among them Archimandrite Vasily Pronin (1911-1997), who later took the schema. As well as being an Elder, the latter was also an extraordinary linguist (he spoke fourteen languages) and a geologist, writing a still unpublished 'History of Carpatho-Russian Orthodoxy from the Beginning until our Days' (2).

Nevertheless, Orthodoxy in the Carpathians was to undergo yet another temptation. This time it was not from outside, but from inside the Church, the temptation of schism. At that time the new Patriarch of Constantinople, Meletios Metaksakis, an ecumenist and a modernist, began to support the Soviet renovationist schismatics and fiercely persecuted the monks of Valaam for keeping the Orthodox calendar and resisting renovationism. To counter the Orthodox Serbs, this Patriarch appointed a Bishop Sabbatius to Carpatho-Russia, with the support of the pro-Catholic Czechoslovak government. Once more Archimandrite Alexis, which he had become in 1925, stood guarding the canons. He supported the Czech Bishop (now St) Gorazd under the Serbian Church and the Carpatho-Russian Church managed to fight off the claims of the modernists. Thanks to Archimandrite Alexis, who was Bishop in all but name, in 1931 the Mukachevo-Presov Diocese was established.

The Church of the Annunciation in Khust, built by Fr Alexis and consecrated in 1928.

Despite immense difficulties, the Rusin Orthodox movement, led by Fr Alexis, blossomed in the 1920s and 1930s. Thus, according to 1936 statistics, the Mukachevo-Presov diocese consisted of 127 churches, had 138 priests and 140,000 faithful. The Carpatho-Russians stood against artificial anti-Orthodox and pro-Catholic Ukrainian nationalism. Fr Alexis was convinced that Carpatho-Russia should be united with a free Russia. Not only a strict ascetic and man of prayer, he was also a national leader and stood up for organizations like the Party of Native Orthodox of Subcarpathian Russia, the Russian People's Party for Reunion and the Orthodox Russian Bloc, which later struggled against the pro-Nazi regime of the Uniat Augustine Voloshin. He also set up the famous 'Orthodox Committees', which in the 1930s fought for the purity of the Faith, for Russia and against Ukrainian separatism. Thus, in 1937, 83% of the Carpatho-Russians were to vote in a referendum in favour of the Russian language, rejecting the so-called ‘Ukrainian’ identity foisted on them.

After the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, the mainly Galician Ukrainian nationalists received financial and political support from another Austrian - Hitler. Led by the Uniat Voloshin, the Ukrainian nationalists who supported Hitler, tried genocide against the Rusins, sending many to concentration camps in Svaliava and Rakhov. However, between 1939 and 1944 Carpatho-Russia was taken over by Hungary under Hitler's orders, but after liberation in 1944 by the Soviet Red Army, the Rusin Golgotha proved to be far from over.

Confessing the Faith under the Soviets

In 1944, Carpatho-Russia was liberated from Nazi oppression. In the face of the atheist scourge, once more it was Fr Alexis who tried to oppose what was happening. On 18 November 1944 scholars, social leaders and 23 Orthodox priests, attended an Orthodox Conference in Mukachevo. The Conference, chaired by George Gerovsky, launched an appeal to Stalin, signed among others by Abbot Theophan Sabov, locum tenens of the Diocese of Mukachevo and Presov, and Archimandrite Alexis. They asked for an Autonomous Carpathian Republic to be formed for all Rusins – ‘sons of Russia’. Having lived in slavery to the Hungarians and Germans for centuries until 1919, they wished to be joined to Great Russia. As they rightly said, they had first heard the word ‘Ukraine’ only during the Czechoslovak period, when Galician nationalists had come to make their propaganda around it.

However, despite the valiant efforts of Fr Alexis, the atheist and anti-Russian Soviet Communist Party was to have no truck with their pleas and betrayed the Rusin Orthodox patriots. Ukrainian Communists, headed by Khrushchev, were with Stalin already organizing the transfer of Carpatho-Russia from Czechoslovakia to the Soviet Ukraine. At the same time, the Orthodox, previously in the jurisdiction of the very supportive Serbian Church, were transferred to the Moscow Patriarchate. At once, the Soviet authorities began to close down both the remaining Uniat churches and also Orthodox churches and monasteries. Their property was seized, just as had happened in Russia itself after 1917. Forced ukrainianization began in the cradle of Russia.

The Soviet persecution of Carpatho-Russia was perhaps the greatest tragedy of all in the life of Archimandrite Alexis, who took the schema on 22 November (new style) 1947. Seeing the cruelty and dishonesty of the atheists, on 2 December (new style) his good and generous heart stopped beating, he was aged 70. Many say that he was poisoned by the Secret Police. Fortunately, he did not live to see Carpatho-Russia incorporated into the Soviet Ukraine, the Rusins renamed Ukrainians and the repression that followed. Fr Theophan Sabov, a firm Russophile who would probably have become the next Bishop of Mukachevo, disappeared and was probably martryred. Rusin patriots were exiled and sent to the GULag, forced ukrainianization took place with 500 Rusin schools closed. Rusins were sent to concentration camps just for speaking their language in public. The atheist Red Army soldiers who had arrived in 1944 had not represented at all the Holy Russia the Rusins had so long awaited.

Thus, the treacherous Bolsheviks tried to ukrainianize the population, using the same tool as the Austro-Hungarian Catholics and Nazi Ukrainians before them. The main persecutor was the notorious Khrushchev, who in 1954 gave away the Crimea to the Ukraine and later brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation, also declaring that by 1970 all the churches in Russia would be closed. The Soviet State was attacking the very cradle of the Russian people. 'Transcarpathian Ukraine', as they called Carpatho-Russia, was industrialized and the ecology damaged through militarization and deforestation. Many Rusins ('Transcarpathians') were forced to the Ukraine to find work and alcoholism flourished in the centralized Soviet 'lumpen-culture'. Only the Orthodox clergy remained as witnesses to Rusin national identity.

The Spiritual Victory of Carpatho-Russia

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the independence of the Ukraine, various schismatic movements have spread there. However, Carpatho-Russia has remained faithful to Orthodoxy. Over 500 parishes and 20 monasteries there remain loyal to the Russian Orthodox Tradition and the Carpatho-Russians still seek autonomy from the Ukraine. Thus, in the spiritual centre of Carpatho-Russia, the Monastery of St Nicholas in Iza, led by Archimandrite Stratonicus (Legach), keenly opposed and opposes the schismatic Ukrainian 'Church', headed by the defrocked Philaret Denisenko in Kiev, as did the Carpatho-Russian Elder, Schema-Archimandrite Vasily (Pronin).

They have been followed in the next generation by a new spiritual and national leader, Archpriest Dimitry Sidor (1955 - ), architect and rector of the new Orthodox Cathedral in Uzhgorod, Chairman of the patriotic Orthodox Rusin 'Society of Sts Cyril and Methodius', publicist and translator of the Gospel into Carpatho-Russian. He has been supported by Abbot Gavriil (1973 - ), a historian of the Orthodox Church in Carpatho-Russia. Both have promoted the idea of a feast-day for the saints of Carpatho-Russia and established a list of local saints, which we will shortly be translating on this site.

In 1998 the Serbian Orthodox Church canonized Bishop Dositheus who did so much for Carpatho-Russian Orthodoxy before the Second World War. Then, in February 1999, at St Nicholas Monastery in Iza, Bishop Agapit of Khust (now of Mukachevo) and Archimandrite Stratonicus uncovered the relics of Schema-Archimandrite Alexis (Kabaliuk). They found them to be almost completely incorrupt. The body, skin and monastic mantle were all intact and only the feet and the wrists had perished in the extremely damp earth. From the grave was taken the Iviron icon of the Mother of God, which Fr Alexis had brought with him from Mt Athos. Its colours had not even faded. This was an extremely important event in the spiritual life of Carpatho-Russia. Its spiritual father was intact, as was its spiritual ideal.

His canonization took place at the Monastery of St Nicholas in Iza on 21 October 2001, under His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and all the Ukraine with many bishops and some twenty thousand faithful. His title is 'Apostle of Carpatho-Russia'. The event had an extraordinary significance, for it marks a turning-point in the life of Carpatho-Russia. It brings the whole region to life not as some schismatic and nationalistic Galician Uniat area of the Western Ukraine, but as an Orthodox centre. The glorification of the holy confessor Alexis shows him to be a national leader of the Rusin people, a true 'Apostle', and shows that they are true children of Russian Orthodoxy, faithful to the Tradition and their own historic destiny.

St Alexis, Apostle of Carpatho-Russia

The great idea of unity with Mother-Russia is alive in Carpatho-Russia. This unique island of the Russian Orthodox Tradition in Europe, which has survived through the feats of blood and prayer cannot be overlooked. After the catastrophes of Hungarian Catholicism and Tartar Islam, Austro-Hungarian Uniatism and Czechoslovak-Constantinopolitan Modernism, Germano-Hungarian Fascism and Soviet-Ukrainian Communism, a window of opportunity has opened for the Rusin people to find their path. Their spiritual leader on that path will always be their Apostle, the twentieth-century saint, Schema-Archimandrite Alexis, and the holy confessors who struggled and suffered with him. This canonization surely marks the beginning of the glorification of the host of Carpatho-Russian saints and has broken through the wall of silence about Carpatho-Russia.

Conclusion: The Spiritual Significance of Carpatho-Russian Orthodoxy

On a broader level, today there is the question of the general destiny of Russian Orthodoxy Outside Russia. Today islands of Russian Orthodoxy live all over the world and even in different languages. True to the Tradition and the Orthodox calendar, they are threatened from all sides, just as Carpatho-Russian Orthodoxy has been threatened throughout the ages. They are menaced by Catholicism and Islamism, Uniatism and Modernism, Fascism and Communism, every variety of human invention, every 'ism'. Nevertheless, these islands of the Russian Orthodox Tradition survive in the towns and cities of Western Europe, North and South America, Australasia and in the Holy Land. Fighting off the spiritual cancer of Renovationism, they are witnesses to the spiritual feat of faithfulness. If Orthodoxy can survive outside Russia, as it has done for a thousand years in Carpatho-Russia, then the rest of us should take heart from their example and do the same.

Holy Father Alexis and All the Confessors of Carpatho-Russia, Pray to God for us!

Notes:

1) Compiled by Bishop Nikon (Rklitsky) and published in New York (1958), Pp. 281-85.

2) See the work 'Vasily Pronin'. This consists of materials prepared for Fr Vasily's eventual canonization, collected by Archpriest Dimitry Sidor and published by Lia and Maria Belovichovy, Bratislava, 1999. We are publishing an article on Fr Vasily in this site.

We also gratefully acknowledge help in writing this article from the Ukrainian booklet (Khust, 2003) on St Alexis, containing his Life and Akathist (which we are translating), and also from the following Russian-language sources:

K. A. Frolov, Press-Secretary of The Union of Orthodox Citizens (Moscow).

Ivan Pop: An Encyclopedia of Sub-Carpathian Russia, Uzhgorod, 2001.

V.M. Razgulov, Chief Editor of the Newspaper, 'The Carpathian Panorama', Beregovo, Carpatho-Russia.

[Kollyvas]

http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/

A Holy Disciple of St John the Wonderworker:
Schema-Archimandrite Vasily of Carpatho-Russia

Monastic life and eldership did not come to an end in Carpatho-Russia during the Soviet period of 1944-1991, not even under the persecutions of Khrushchev. After the repose of Archimandrite (now St) Alexis (Kabaliuk) in 1947, the names of Archimandrites Job (Kundria) (+ 1985) and Vasily (Pronin) (+ 1997) came to the fore. Surely, one day, their names will be listed in calendars together with the other saints of Carpatho-Russia.

Archimandrite Vasily, in the world Vladimir Pronin, was born in Kiev on 8 September 1914 to an ancient noble Russian family. From childhood he showed humility, piety and love of the church, thanks to the upbringing of his devout parents Vasily and Iroida. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Vladimir's family emigrated to Orthodox Serbia. There, Vladimir studied at seminary in Bitol and met many bishops of the Serbian and Russian Churches. Above all, he frequented Hieromonk (now St) John (Maximovich), his spiritual mentor. The latter greatly influenced Vladimir and considered him to be one of his closest spiritual children. Although Fr John was consecrated Bishop in 1934 and went to Shanghai, he never lost contact with Vladimir.

Between 1934 and 1937, Vladimir studied at the Theological Faculty of the University of Belgrade, graduating with distinction. It was on completing these studies that Vladimir visited Kishinev and the crypt where his parents were buried. While inside this crypt, the metal door slammed shut on him and he found himself trapped inside. Vladimir prayed with tears and made a vow that if he could get out, he would devote his whole life to God. At that moment the door opened. From now on Vladimir's destiny came to be linked with Bishop Vladimir (Raich).

Born in 1882, Bishop Vladimir was a Serb who had studied in Russia, including at the Moscow Academy. On returning to Serbia, he had spent thirty years teaching catechism in schools, until in 1937 he was tonsured and consecrated bishop by the Serbian Patriarch Gabriel, Metropolitan Anastasius, head of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, the Serbian Bishops Irineius and Simeon and Bishop (now Hieromartyr) Dositheus.

On 10 March 1939, Bishop Vladimir tonsured Vladimir Pronin, aged 25, monk and then ordained him to the priesthood. Vladimir was given the name of Vasily (Basil), in honour of St Basil the Fool-for-Christ. Bishop Vladimir had been appointed Bishop of Mukachevo in Carpatho-Russia, for the autonomous Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church was then in the spiritual care of the Serbian Church. Bishop Vladimir loved Carpatho-Russia, which during the 1930s was fighting to keep its Orthodoxy and national identity, and he was to take Fr Vasily there.

On hearing this news, Bishop John sent Hieromonk Vasily a congratulatory telegram: 'I sincerely congratulate you on receiving the monastic tonsure and the priesthood. I rejoiced with all my heart when I read your letter. Entering monasticism and taking up the service of the Church in the much-suffering Carpatho-Russian land, you have made the right choice, useful to you and to many...The Carpathian land is very close to me as an ancient Russian land...For centuries it has kept the faith and its national identity, despite all the attempts to supplant them. That land will always remain close to me and I send my greetings to the disciples who have been prepared to serve the Church'. Bishop John constantly corresponded with Fr Vasily and took a keen interest in the situation in Carpatho-Russia.

Hieromonk Vasily served in various parishes in Carpatho-Russia and was ever a zealous pastor and missionary. However, on 19 November 1945, at the end of the Second World War and under Soviet occupation, the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church passed into the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. In 1946 Fr Vasily became the spiritual father of the Convent of St Nicholas on Monastery Hill in Mukachevo. For over fifty years he was to give spiritual nourishment to the nuns there. Many of them had suffered greatly for Orthodoxy, among them the Abbess, Mother Nina (in the world Juliana Prokop). Others, from laypeople to hierarchs, and from all over the Soviet Union, beat a path to Fr Vasily’s door, seeking his unceasing prayer, counsel and clairvoyance.

Archimandrite Vasily was a highly cultivated man. He had a command of fourteen languages, knew Latin and Greek thoroughly and spoke Russian, English, French, German, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian and Serb fluently. He was also a mineralologist and a famous expert on the minerals of Carpatho-Russia. In 1958, at the Moscow Theological Academy, Fr Vasily defended a doctorate on the History of the Mukachevo Diocese from the Beginnings until 1914. Using many sources, this highly serious and still unsurpassed work on the history of Orthodoxy in Carpatho-Russia showed that Carpatho-Russia had always defended Orthodox and its identity, whatever the attempts to uproot it. It is a great misfortune that it has not yet been published. As one Rusin who has read it has remarked that it shows that his Christian homeland in the Carpathians is part of the great Holy Russia.

This ‘History’ is not the only learned work of Fr Vasily. He also wrote ’A Rule for Monks, ‘The Rites of the Convent of Mukachevo’, ‘The Bible and Mathematics’, ‘Rebirth and Resurrection’, ‘Gravity and the Renaissance’, 'Subcarpathian Linguistics’, and ‘The Paleolithic on Monastery Hill’. Fr Vasily was the only person to the present time to attempt archaeological excavations in Carpatho-Russia. He composed an Akathist to St Moses the Hungarian and several prayers. He was also an artist and painted one of the few pictures dealing with Orthodox history in Carpatho-Russia. This is a picture called ‘The Appearance of the Angel to Prince Theodore Koriatovich on the River Latoritsa’. The latter led the uprising of the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox against their Hungarian persecutors in the Middle Ages.

Fr Vasily was a wonderful pastor, who, ‘loved everyone, forgave everyone and warmed the hearts of all with his spiritual father’s love’, as his spiritual children write of him. Forced to lie down for the last year of his life, he foreknew the time of his repose. In 1997, a week before he passed over, he told his doctor of his coming parting. A few days before his repose he made his farewells to the nuns. He reposed on the night of 4 and 5 January and his burial took place on the Feast of the Nativity. Fr Vasily’s memory is honoured in the Convent and his cell is kept as it was. His body lies next to that of the Confessor, Abbess Nina, in the Convent cemetery. Many go there and the faithful maintain that healings take place. Details of the life of Archimandrite Vasily have been handed to the Canonization Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church.

From Fr Vasily’s Diary:

O Virginity - inexhaustible riches!
O Virginity - unfading crown!
O Virginity - the house of God and the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit!
O Virginity - the pearl of great price, unseen by many and acquired by few!
O Abstinence, unseen by many and known by those worthy of Thee!
O Abstinence, escaping death and judgement and crowned with glorious immortality!
O Abstinence, joy of the Prophets and boast of the Apostles!
O Abstinence, life of the Angels and crown of the Saints!

Blessed is he who holds on to Thee, blessed is he who has zeal with patience for Thee, for he will rejoice in Thee!

Blessed is he who fasts for a brief time, for he will dwell in the Jerusalem on high, sing in choir with the angels and repose with the holy Prophets and Apostles.

Today I am going to read the Holy Scriptures from the beginning. First of all I will turn to the Saviour in prayer, so that He may open my mind to understand the Scriptures, as he opened the minds of His Apostles on the road to Emmaus after the Resurrection.

People follow their own ways, they have forgotten the ways of God.

There are within the human heart two equal possibilities: to become a saint or to become a thief. And from the thief to the saint, there is only one path - that of repentance, reconciliation. Having created man, who broke the commandment of God, free, and not wishing to destroy human freedom, God reconciled man to Him through sacrificing His Son.

To fall in thought is a great fall. He who does not take sin seriously is far from the Truth.

Monastic life strengthened within me my physical health, which was shattered by chronic hunger and finally malaria and colds. In the same way my emotional and spiritual health were also strengthened. I gave myself up to His holy will with deep faith in the mercy of God and unceasing humility.

The struggle for the Church! How many disappointments, how much pain! How much pain from our own weakness and from circumstances. People are against, history is against, circumstances are against! But Christ is with us! He will help us to step out onto a new road, a new way. O Lord, if the time comes to suffer for Thy Holy Name, then strengthen me with Thy grace, that my sinful tongue may not grow weak and my weary knees may not fail. O Lord, keep me in Thy strength. The Church of God is desecrated and defiled. She is humiliated and blasphemous cries and words compass Her round about. But, O Lord, preserve the faith in the hearts of those that love Thee. I surrender my heart in complete service to Thee, O Lord my God. If I ask for help, then it is because I am without strength. Thou hast said: Without me ye can do nothing. Keep me, O Lord, my heart and my soul. Let there be sufferings in this life and sorrows, but strengthen my faith.

The case of a miraculous healing through the prayers of Fr Vasily:

I, Yuri Andreyevich Openchuk, was born on 9 June 1945, in the town of Lebedinoe in the province of Suma. My father was a soldier, my mother a deeply religious woman. From childhood I believed in God and in the strength of prayer, as my mother taught me. From then on, wherever I was and whatever I was doing, I thanked our Lord for everything and never forgot about prayer, I prayed always and everywhere.

I first visited the Convent in Mukachevo in 1992. From then on, whenever I went to Mukachevo, I always went to the Convent. My soul headed there. In church I always felt light, at home, bright. I met the nuns and took great pleasure in speaking to them. In 1994 I went to the Convent and Mother Leonida asked Fr Theodore to take me to Fr Vasily to ask for his blessing, which he gave.

When three years later I returned, I discovered that Fr Vasily had passed over. No-one told me where his grave was or how to find it. But as I was walking though the cemetery, I noticed a mound of earth and a cross. There was no indication as to who it was, it was as though my soul had led me to the grave of Archimandrite Vasily. I knelt down, put my hands on the mound of earth and, weeping, began to pray. I asked his soul to pray for my sinful self, my family and my child.

On the evening of that same day I was about to say evening prayers. Having picked up my prayer-book, I could not find the magnifying glass which I use to read with. Suddenly I realized that I could read without it. Since childhood I had had bad eyesight. I had always needed glasses to read. With age, reading had become harder and I had begun to use a magnifying glass. But now I could read without it and without glasses. For the first time I could read my prayer-book without the impression of being blind. Archimandrite Vasily had helped me.

We had been living in Donetsk, but after this I and my family decided to come and live in Mukachevo. We often go to the Convent and I always go to Elder's grave and thank him for healing me.

Yury Openchuk

(This article has been translated from material by Archpriest Dimitri Sidor and Kirill Frolov. Fr Andrew)

[Kollyvas]

To: webmaster@acrod.org

Slava Isusu Khristu!

I recently became aware that your diocese would be blasphemously commemorating uniate apostates as "saints." Needless to say, I grew to be quite disappointed. What I am forwarding you is a factual account of the struggle for Orthodoxy in Carpatho-Russia so that you at least give the side of ORTHODOX CONFESSORS a fair hearing...
ORTHODOXIA I THANATOS!
Rostislav Mikhailovich Malleev-Pokrovsky

Carpatho-Russia And The Struggle For The Russian Orthodox Tradition Outside Russia

Introduction: Carpatho-Russia

Carpatho-Russia is situated in Eastern Europe...

[尼古拉前执事]

So the ACROD archdiocese of the EP is now officially commemorating Roman Catholic as well as Orthodox Saints?

While this seems shocking, I am going to combine this thread with another thread at http://euphrosynoscafe.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1639 about them concelebrating with the Uniates since this seems like it may be part of a pattern.

[Kollyvas]

Evlogeite Pater.
It all has to do with administration where +metropolitan nicholas is a "former uniate." The simple people in ACROD--my wife was baptized in ACROD and her grandparents knew EXACTLY why they left unia for Orthodoxy--are not aware of this and kept in the dark with ep propaganda. Indeed, the rotten head is playing ep neo-papalism in a way so as to make ACROD administration (one pope exchanged for another) equivalent with the bcc, where he has "very good relations" and often engages in joint prayers--he even holds parastases for their reposed hierarchs. The fish rots from the head first. Before this embarassment was appointed, the primacy of this diocese was offered to +Metropolitan Laurus who rejected it because the diocese wouldn't enter ROCOR. The spiritual harm caused will be on his shoulders.
In the LOVE of Christ,
Rostislav
http://www.goarch.org/en/news/NewsDetail.asp?id=1474

...the inclusion of two Greek Catholics in the “Synaxis of the Carpathian Saints” issued by Metropolitan Nicholas of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of the USA. ..

[Kollyvas]

http://www.holycross-hermitage.com/page ... _maxim.htm

THE PERSECUTION AND DEATH OF
FR. MAXIM SANDOVICH

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A 2Oth Century Carpatho-Russian Martyr for Orthodoxy

The Orthodox movement in Carpatho-Russia had deep roots and causes. The infamous union with Rome did not originate with the masses of the common people, but had been imposed through the machinations of the urban merchant class and a small minority of the clergy who greatly desired the same feudal rights that their Catholic counterparts enjoyed. Thus, these two classes of people betrayed their Orthodox princes and the faithful. The two religions struggled with fire and sword, but even after the victory of the Unia, Orthodoxy was not so quickly forgotten. To counterbalance Catholic influence and to further deceive the people, the Uniates carefully preserved the purity of the Eastern Orthodox ritual, considering that a policy of slow and gradual latinization would be far more successful in the long run than one of outright imposition of the Roman ritual. Yet the cultural inclination of the Carpatho-Russian people towards the Russian mainstream, which expressed itself in undisguised sympathy for Russia and all that was Russian, could not be silenced even in the province of religion. In the eyes of most prominent Galicians and Carpatho Russians the Unia was but the instrument and means employed to sunder the one Russian family and they directed their gaze towards Orthodoxy as the ancient and original faith of their people when Holy Rus had been one. This inclination which was distinctively Russian was a crucial element in the Carpatho-Russian reaction against the "Ukrainianism" artfully contrived by the Germans as a weapon against the pan-Slavic movement that threatened their domination of the area. Even among the Carpatho-Russian Uniate clergy who perpetuated the idea of the union there were sympathies towards Or thodoxy. These sympathies were so intense that the very concept of "Catholic" was considered a sort of heresy. Indeed, their concept of the union was reduced to a purely jurisdictional recognition of the primacy of the Pope of Rome.

Orthodox sympathies were characteristic of the people of Carpatho Russia, and to a lesser extent of the Galicians. Alarmed by the growth of these sympathies and correctly concluding that this growth was being directed toward rapprochement with Russia, the Austro-Hungarian authorities began to eradicate the "Russian" sedition. Unprecedented repressions were imposed upon the Russophile clergy, both Uniate and Orthodox. The area teamed with informers. Not only the gendarmes, village clerks and sheriffs, but also teachers and some of the clergy denounced their neighbors. It reached the point where, in some areas of Carpatho-Russia, the entire educated class - priests, lawyers, judges, teachers, high school and university students, as well as peasants - were subjected to mass arrests. The prisons were quickly overflowing with those accused of treason.

In accordance with a directive issued by Vienna, the Uniate Metropolitan of Lvov, threatened with the growth of Orthodoxy, quickly shifted his ecclesiastical policy to one of isolation from all that was Orthodox and Russian. A Ukrainian Uniate ritual was concocted which differed significantly from Orthodox ritual. The names of saints especially revered in Russia were deleted from the calendar. The veneration of wonderworking icons of the All-holy Theotokos which had manifested themselves in Russia (e.g. the Iveron, Kazan and Pochaev icons) were proscribed. The word "Orthodox" was replaced in the divine services with "Catholic." Candidates suspected of harboring Russophile sympathies were refused admittance to the Uniate seminaries, acceptance being limited exclusively to those admittedly Ukrainian in outlook who were prepared to submit a written oath of hatred for Russia.

Throughout the Carpathian region a tremendous upheaval shook the parishes. Uniate priests of Russian persuasian were driven from their posts, their families were cast out into the streets, and few were the courageous souls who dared to defy the authorities by sheltering the homeless. The parishes were then turned over to newly-ordained priests who had received their education at the hands of the Jesuits of the Basilian College. The imposition of the new Ukrainian Uniate ritual was entrusted to the Jesuit-educated monks of the 'Order of St. Basil the Great." But if life had become so difficult for the Uniate Russophile clergy, it was far worse for the few Orthodox priests and their families in Carpatho-Russia and Galicia. Let us examine the case of one such priest, Fr. Maxim Sandovich, of blessed memory.

Fr. Maxim was born in Galicia in the Horlitsky District, the son of Timofei and Christina Sandovich of the village of Zdyna. His father, Timofei, was a prosperous farmer who also served as cantor (psalomschik) in the local parish church. Maxim, having completed four years of study at the gymnasium (high school) in Novy Sanch, stole across the border into Russia and entered the novitiate at the great Pochaev Lavra in Volynia. Subsequently he attended the Orthodox seminary at Zhitomir, and after marrying a young Orthodox woman named Pelagia, was ordained in 1911 to the holy priesthood and returned to his homeland. His pastoral and missionary service was not to last for long, for the militia were ever vigilant; he was denounced by a Ukrainian teacher, a certain Leos, and the Austrian gendarmes carried him off in chains to a prison in Lvov in 1912. He was to languish in prison without trial or inquest for two years, enduring indescribably horrible conditions and abuse. Finally, on the very eve of World War I he was released for lack of evidence.

Fr. Maxim returned again to his home in the village of Hrab, but was not fated to remain there long. The first shots fired in the new war were the heralds of a new repression of Russophile Carpatho-Russians. On August 4,1914, the militia arrested the young priest, his father, mother, brother and wife and after much abuse dragged them off in shackles to the district prison in Horlitsk. The road was rough and the prisoners were forced to travel on foot, prodded on by the bayonets of the gendarmes. Words cannot convey the suffering of the innocent Sandovich family.

Two days passed in prison, and Sunday, August 6th, dawned. Having rison from his bunk before the light of day Fr. Maxim read his morning prayers and three akathists. Then he stood motionless, lost in thought, gazing out the little window of his cell, trying to catch a glimpse of his wife or one of his relatives. They had all been imprisoned in different cells and were denied permission to see each other. The silence of the grave lay on the gloomy building, but beyond the walls the noise of a crowd could be heard.

What could this portend? Could they have brought in some new "spies"? Perhaps they had caught some new deserters the terrors of war for many are hard to bear. Suddenly a loud thud on the prison's black gates broke the priest's reverie. It was not yet six o'clock. A mustachioed German captain from Linz, Dietrich, a man with a reputation for cruelty and sadism, entered the prison compound with two soldiers and four gendarmes. They were followed close behind by the prison wardens, various civil servants, officers and a small group of curious ladies. This entourage was headed by Pan Mitshka, the starosta of the Horlitsky District. The order was given for the warden to bring Fr. Maxim forth from his cell.

Silence fell. Two soldiers led the twenty-eight year old Orthodox priest from the prison and suddenly he realized where it was they were taking him. "Be so good as not to hold me. I will go peacefully wherever you wish," he said humbly, and with the dignity that becomes a true shepherd of souls he walked to the sight of his final torments. The murmuring of the crowd and the venomous glances they threw the "traitor" affected his courageous bearing not in the least. He walked as befits a follower of Christ, calmly, with measured gait, to the fateful wall.

Again silence reigned. An execution was to be carried out in the name of the "apostolic" emperor - the execution of a Russian priest on Russian land! Captain Dietrich, the hero of the day, ripped the cross from Fr. Maxim's chest, cast it to the ground at the priest's feet and trampled it under foot; he then tied the prisoner's hands behind his back and bound his eyes with a black kerchief. "You do these things needlessly. I have no intention of running away." The captain laughed diabolically and with a piece of white chalk drew a line across the priest's chest on his black riassa as a target for the riflemen. Then he arranged the executioners - two gendarmes on each side. The two soldiers, heavily armed, stood only three paces from the defenseless man.

An even more profound stillness descended upon the scene. Starosta Mitshka took a blue paper from his briefcase and read the death sentence. A short command was uttered by the captain; the sabre was raised; when it was lowered the carbine rifles sounded. The echo of the shots reverberated through the back corridors of the prison, and again the silence of the cemetery ripped the prison courtyard. Across this silence the voice of Fr. Maxim was heard distinctly: "Long live the Russian people!" he cried, leaning his head against the prison wall. "Long live the Holy Orthodox Faith!" he continued, his voice becoming weaker. "Long live Slavism!" he finished, bearly audible. These were his final words. Wracked with the throws of death, his powerful frame slid down the wall to the flagstones of the courtyard. One of the gendarmes approached and ended the priest's sufferings with three shots from his revolver; the priests brains splattered against the prison wall. His aged father and mother both watched the heroic death of their son in silence, but Pelagia, his wife, wept inconsolably in her cell; and when the shots that brought an end to her young husband's life rang out, she fell senseless to the ground. Thus died Fr. Maxim Sandovich, a modern martyr for Holy Orthodoxy.

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